First to the stage was Erich Clementi (Sr. Vice President, IBM Global Technology Services) to talk about service aggregation.

Smarter Computing is offering new opportunities that will impact the infrastructure due to the unprecedented scale in everything and the way consumability (everything everywhere every time) is changing how IT needs to respond and react.

The boundaries of IT are changing, the infrastructure is changing. Anywhere. Anytime and any device is the new reality.

Erich remarked that the industrializatin of IT supported services (think Ford assembly line) will open up new options in sourcing services. This will reinvent all sorts of services born on the cloud to be more complex and with richer options.

The hybrid cloud will be critical because customers are going to run workloads where it meets the best fit. So these hybrid clouds need to be interconnected, integrated, seamless, secure, auditable and dependable.

This is changing the role of the CIO.

There was an interesting comment Erich made that James Governor (@monkchips) and I were talking about on Twitter. "We are confronted by the infrastructures our clients have, not the ones we wish they have." James responded (and I tend to agree), "make them change. the status quo is not acceptable."

Erich showed how CAPEX utilization is actually a minor benefit of going to the cloud whereas things like the standardization from being on the cloud provide the greater value to customers and it's in OPEX where the bigger savings come in.

There is an existing world that will need to be re-factored and re-thought out to get to the cloud.

Erich left the audience with three interesting thoughts:

Cloud is easy for consumption, but it requires a different delivery model

Changes in the role of IT will allow them to get closer to the business

you need a partner that gives you the choice and will get you there (like IBM)

Helene Armitage (GM of IBM System Software and Systems Growth) was next to present on innovations and Smarter Computing.

(I worked with Helene when she was in charge of AIX development it was her leadership with AIX, in my opinion, that helped get us back in the game in the early 00's with pSeries).

Helene did a very nice transition from Erich's keynote to talk about how these are the systems that are powering the things Erich discussed previously.

Consumer behavior is what is driving what happens in the IT data center and influencing hardware design. Consumers are creating data that is being captured and driven and running in the back-end systems in these data centers.

We need to evolve what is there today, but the rate and pace of change will continue to grow and the requirements for hardware will be driven by consumers. Where the consumers go, the IT department has to follow.

Smarter Computing systems are designed for data, delivered in the cloud and tuned to task. Helene used a good healthcare example. The data explosion in general, let alone healthcare (which Manoj will discuss), is phenomenal.

Everything is instrumented and capturing data. Data growth will be at 50x by 2020. An estimated 80% of the world's population will have a mobile device in the coming years.

The social implications of this data explosion will affect how hardware requirements are written. Enterprise systems with performance, scalability, reliability and availability will be critical.

Flexible systems to manage the data and remain secure will be important (and Helene gave a mention of RAS in this instance).

Helene also left the audience with three things (it's a day for lists):

(I call IBM Watson "he," though I was corrected on Twitter and IBM Watson could very well be "she")

Jeopardy was not the end, it was just the beginning of putting IBM Watson to work.

IBM Watson is currently focused on Healthcare (and now) Financial Services Sector jobs and is a key enabler for Smarter Planet and the new problem of data explosion.

Consider that 90% of data was generated over the past 2 years. 80% is unstructured and only 20% of it is used by traditional systems.

Those companies that can effectively use this "Big Data" are more successful.

Manoj is breaking down how IBM Watson does its magic. It not only reads Big Data, it understands it. IBM Watson is a filter, that's what makes it so good

Healthcare is a great place to start with IBM Watson because of the data explosion. Doctors can not keep up with this explosion and as a result, 1 in 5 diagnosis in the US are incorrect.

Between 44,000 - 98,000 people die every year because of being misdiagnosised, so it is crucial to get this right. (another sobering thought about how what we do impacts lives).

1 in 4 people will die of cancer and 20-44% of errors occure in the first diagnosis. So better diagnosis and treatment is far more complex than Jeopardy answers, but IBM Watson is learning about what it needs to do.

IBM Watson is going after cancer as a medical assistant. It's being packaged with "adviser cartridges" for different areas of different industries and will be in the cloud (public, private or hybrid - whatever works for the customer).

If you have spent five minutes with me, you have probably heard me rave about the "WTF" podcast from Marc Maron.

It is the first topic of discussion when I talk to a friend of mine (second being Doctor Who).

The reason WTF works is that you have a veteren comedian (Maron) who knows the questions to ask. Who understands the journey. Who can have the types of discussions that lead to places you and I wouldn't think to go.

Maron is on the short-list of great interviewers. His podcast is one of the few times where the word "fascinating" really applies.

Well, the format for this keynote is going to be a little different. He is going to be interviewed by none other than IBM's very own; Grady Booch (@grady_booch).

Grady is an innovator in the same vein as Woz. He was one of three individuals who invented UML.

As someone who worked for a company that relied heavily on UML (which I'm sure is the same for many readers), it's like "Memphis" Raines meeting Henry Ford. He's pretty much the reason a number of us are where we are in this industry.

UML. The Apple computer.

Grady and Woz were not only on the ground floor of technology revolutions, but they both built most of the foundations.

Between the two of them, they personify the type of innovation that we promote at Pulse 2012.

I can not stress this enough: innovation is the differentiator. It's what puts our clients in the leadership position in their industry. It's the thing that organizations playing "catch up" are trying to chase down.

Pulse is about not only helping you find the solutions to drive your innovation, but it's also about mindset. It's about thinking like an innovator.

Thinking like Woz and Grady. Getting you there.

And a keynote like this, with a real in-depth discussion between two of the best in the business. It's gonna be fascinating and you need to be there.